Last week, on Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th, the Greenlight for Girls team went to the International School of Brussels (ISB), who let us use their lab space, to meet Radio X on site representative Emilijia Jovanoska. The project was led by Melissa Rancourt and Jelena Lucin, and we were lucky to have four wonderful young volunteers from the British School of Brussels help execute all our experiments. In addition, two interns working at the Serendip Spa as well as one more girl currently attending ISB and two guest speakers, Arunima Roy (a Famelab finalist) and Farrukh Yasin also joined the fun!

The Greenlight for Girls team explored four self-created themes: “DIY experiments”, “Science fact vs. fiction”, “Tricky/Mindboggling Concepts”, and “Science takes over ISB”. Over the two days of work shopping, these themes revealed themselves most peculiar through the numerous interviews led by Emilija.

DIY Experiments:

All material had to be found prior to the two days at ISB for the DIY experiments, which was kindly done by Jelena. These experiments didn’t consume too much time to be set up and they are the kind of experiments that can be done by people of any ages. Experiments include “The daisy experiment”, “Bath bombs”, “The magic milk experiment”, “Fruit ripening”, “Elephant’s toothpaste”, “Home-made lava lamps” and more! Most of these experiments have tutorial videos which can be found on the youtube account of Greenlight for Girls (“glightforgirls”).

Science Fact Vs Fiction:

The scripts for these segments were taken care of by the Greenlight for Girls interns. To debate the different issues, the girls created three characters: the “Know-it-all”, the “Believer”, and the “non-believer”. Each of these characters brought their personality forth whilst discussing some of the most incredible myths, including whether or not lobsters are really immortal, why berries are called berries, if turtles can really breathe out of their bum, and how the grip of a sloth can be fatal. The Greenlight for Girls interns managed to make each script have some sort of message intertwined in its text. One example of this can be found in the one about sloths, where one of the important messages is not to be too gullible when it comes to believing what social media has to offer young audiences. The target audiences of these scripts were young girls, in general between the ages of 11 – 15, also being one of the crucial audiences of the organization.

Tricky/Mindboggling Concepts

This theme consisted of interviews and research studies discussed in depth. These studies were conducted by our two guest speakers – Arunima and Farrukh. The first discussion was led by Arunima, she told Radio X representative Emilijia about brain plasticity and epigenetics. Lots of questions were asked by our volunteers, and answered by our guest speaker. Next we had Farrukh talk to Emilija about time travel and parallel universes! This discussion was actually done over the phone as he couldn’t be physically present. The conversation took an interesting turn when the questions asked became much more of a natural curiosity rather than from the scripted text that Farrukh had prepared answers for. He did, however, manage to answer each question in great depth whilst giving precise points.

Science Takes Over ISB

In this theme we had two main experiments that were carried through on Friday. The two investigations were done by the volunteers and were a lot of fun! The first experiment that was done was more of a physics based science – slinkies! What the girls did was go to numerous sizes of staircases and test how fast the two slinky sizes would respond. When set in motion on a stepped platform such as a stairway, the slinky actually transfers its energy along its length in a longitudinal wave, so the various staircases had different effects on the two different sized-slinkies. When going down, the whole spring descends end over end in a periodical motion down the steps, as if it were somersaulting down one step at a time, and the end result looked great on video!

Non-Newtonian Fluid Experiment!

To conclude this two-day adventure at the International School of Brussels, the Greenlight for Girls team cleaned-up the lab and took some final event pictures, all whilst saying our goodbyes to everyone who helped out. Overall the two days have been quite eventful and busy; but the work has definitely paid off. RadioX will be airing the broadcast in September of 2014, and all of Greenlight for Girls as well as everyone who participated are looking forward to these science series of segments!